The TVAD Research Group, based in the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire, researches relationships between text, narrative and image. We publish books, journal articles, host a double-blind peer-reviewed journal, Writing Visual Culture (previously Working Papers on Design) and host events including international conferences.

Tuesday, 17 March 2015

Javier
Gimeno-Martínez is Assistant Professor at the VU University Amsterdam. He holds a MA-degree in Industrial Design from the Universidad
Cardenal Herrera, Valencia (Spain) and an MA-degree on Art History from the
Universidad de Valencia. He got his PhD in 2006 from the KULeuven with the
dissertation “The Role of the Creative Industries in the Construction of
Regional/European Identities (1975-2002): Design and Fashion in Belgium and
Spain.” He was a visiting scholar in the department of Design History at the
Royal College of Art (London, UK) for the year 2009-2010. Dr Gimeno-Martínez’s
research interests encompass design and fashion as related with consumption,
gender and national identity. He has been conducting research on the shifting
cultural status of industrial design and craft from the 1950s up to today with
Belgium as case study, funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders from 2007
to 2010. The culmination of the first three years of this research project was
the seventh ICDHS conference “Design and Craft: A History of Convergences and Divergences”, organized in collaboration with Dr. Fredie Floré, which provided
the opportunity for an international discussion on regional specificities as
well as the impact of global processes of industrialisation. If, until now,
design history has been largely dominated by the Western narratives of
industrialization, then moving the focus towards non- industrial design
practice might bring non-Western scholars to the forefront. Moreover, previously
marginalized design histories in industrialized countries can finally get a
voice. Dr Gimeno-Martínez was an Editor of the Journal
of Design History from
2008-2013 and he is currently co-editing a special issue on Dutch design for
that journal.

·PROGRAMME

THURSDAY 19th MARCH 2015

10 am to
12 pm - Reading Group – Gallery Café

Session
with TVAD and School research staff and PG students. Texts have been tabled for
discussion from Dr Javier Gimeno-Martínez,
Dr Barbara Brownie, Dr Steven Adams and Dr Pat Simpson. They are available to participants on
request from Dr Grace Lees-Maffei g.lees-maffei@herts.ac.uk

What are we talking
about when we talk about British design? Or Dutch design? What is produced in
the country or what is consumed in the country? Both positions are
substantiated by different theoretical approaches. We must be however aware of
the implications when using one or another. This talk will elaborate on these
theoretical frameworks and how they can contribute to a better understanding of
national design.

11 am – Coffee,
Welcome and ‘Introduction: Designing Worlds: National Design Histories in an
Age of Globalization’, Dr Grace Lees-Maffei, Reader in Design History, School
of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire.

Contemporary
design is global. Along with international developments in higher education,
the influence of post-colonial theory, and intellectual endeavours like ‘world
history’, design historians are now writing Global
Design History (to use the title of a 2011 edited collection). While the
nation state is no longer the only socio-cultural or political-economic unit
forming our identities and experiences—if it ever were—this paper examines the
value of national frameworks in writing design history and asks whether moves
to discard them are premature. Are national histories of design dependent upon
outmoded generalisations and stereotypes? Or do they demonstrate cogent
frameworks for the discussion of common socio-economic and cultural conditions
and shared identities? Globalizing design history involves writing new
histories of neglected regions and nations and revisionist histories informed by
the findings and methods of new comparative and global histories, of celebrated
industrial nations.

11.30 am
- What can we learn about research
methodology from the sacking of the Bastille: 2-4 pm. Tuesday 14th July 1789?
Dr Steven Adams, Associate Dean Research, School of Creative Arts & Head of
Research Degrees (Social Sciences Arts and Humanities Research Institute),
University of Hertfordshire.

In this brief talk, I want to look at some of the
methodological problems encountered in the examination of an historical event,
the fall of the Bastille that marked the start of the French Revolution. In an
attempt to a raft of set secondary sources on the subject to one side, I turn
instead to a range of primary material - textual and material - generated in
the weeks after the Bastille's fall, texts and artefacts that defy easy
categorisation and perhaps test the boundaries of some normative forms of
academic history, art history and design history. We are left, I suggest, with
things and writing about things made and writtenby citizens struggling to keep pace with the
events unfolding around them. In an attempt to begin find a place for myself in
these events, I turn to a set of methodological strategies from codicology and
cultural studies, to existentialism, 'chronographie' and the study of necrophilia.
In a nutshell, the talk attempts to bring some historical and textual fragments
into the light in the same way that those who sacked the Bastille, laid its
contents out for the comment and inspection of their peers in the days after
the 14th of July

12.15 am – Modern Wife, Modern
Life: Expectations of the 1960s Irish Housewife, Dr Ciara Meehan, Senior
Lecturer in History & Associate Programme Tutor for Humanities, School of
Humanities, University of Hertfordshire.

The Modern Wife, Modern Life exhibition opens at the
National Print Museum of Ireland.It
explores representations and expectations of Irish housewives as seen in the
pages of women’s magazines from the 1960s. The exhibition has been supplemented
with domestic objects crowd-sourced from the Irish public. While the objects
themselves are not particularly unusual, many of them had fascinating and
revealing backstories. These objects are being used to construct a picture of
how everyday life was experienced and understood by ‘ordinary’ women in the
1960s.

1 pm to
1.45 pm – Lunch, Provided

1.45 pm -
A Special Relationship: The Transatlantic Domestic
Dialogue, Dr Grace Lees-Maffei, Reader in Design History, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire.

Design History has been bounded by national
borders, and yet design is local, regional, international, intranational, and
global as well as national. In this presentation, I call for transnational
design history, using the case study of domestic advice literature, a mediating
genre which contains a wealth of information about real ideals of the
consumption of design in the home. Just as manners are markers of national
identity (in that the people of different countries display different
behaviours) so advice literature has been a tool in the formation of national
identity. For example, Sarah A. Leavitt (2002) has discussed the role of
homemaking literature in the process of Americanization, turning immigrants
into American citizens. But while domestic advice books have a normalizing
function—a white middle class ideal is published for white middle class readers
to follow—mainstream examples have largely failed to recognise the ethnic
diversity of US, and UK, society. Furthermore, an insistence on national
borders as borders for understanding domestic advice literature has led to
erroneous chronologies based on the relatively recent introduction of domestic
advice literature into US publishing when compared with its long roots in the
European literary tradition. And directly after World War II, historian Arthur
Schlesinger regarded etiquette literature as a channel for the maintenance of
world peace, in that it could help people from different countries to
understand and show respect for one another. Informal manners have been
presented as an American national trait, not only in British domestic advice
literature with its implied fear of Americanization, but also through claims in
US-produced titles of the forging of American manners. The pre-eminent American
advice writer, Emily Post. continually adapted her advice to keep pace with the
informalization of American society, and yet she was ridiculed by authors of
‘the new hospitality’, Mary and Russel Wright, who saw her not as the arbiter
of American etiquette, but rather as a proselytiser for English manners at odds
with the needs of mid-century Americans. To understand the importance of
domestic advice literature in mediating national identities, we must also recognise
the transatlantic development of the genre in a ‘domestic dialogue’ between the
UK and the US of several centuries standing.

2.30 pm – ‘A graphic negotiation with the past, present and future. Political
devolution and the symbols of the Spanish regions (1977–1991)’, Dr Javier
Gimeno-Martínez, VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Political
devolution results in administrative institutions that are generally created
anew. However, these new institutions try to conceal the brevity of their
existence by reusing communal symbols from the past, such as flags or coats of
arms. Even when these symbols might objectively carry certain polemical
connotations, the weight of tradition can become an opportune tool
for legitimating institutions, so that the past is somehow forced to
conform to the present. Properly analysing this instrumentalization of
historical iconography can pose quite a challenge for both historians and
designers. Indeed, it is present-mindedness rather than historical perspective
that drives these legitimating processes. This talk analyses the
negotiation of signs by the governmental bodies that resulted from Spanish
political devolution and their negotiation with both their past under Franco's
dictatorship and their future in democratic Spain.

3.15 pm – ‘Re-packing the
nation: The Analysis of Ideological Symbolism in Tourist Advertising for
Poland’, Dr Marta Rabikowska, Principal Lecturer in Creative Industries, Leader
in Creative Employability, School of Creative Arts, University of
Hertfordshire.

Dr Marta Rabikowska will present preliminary findings from her research
on tourist advertising campaigns for Poland, issued after 2004 (the date of
Poland’s accession to the EU). Rabikowska has published on the history of
Polish advertising and the representation of gender stereotypes in Polish
advertising before (2003) Rabikowska, M., ‘Female representation and dominant ideologies
in Polish advertising’, East
Central Europe. Vol. 30, 2, p. 39-61), which research provided the foundation to
her analysis of ideological symbolism in tourist advertising affected by the
intense migration movement from Poland to the EU countries in the last
decade.In this presentation, she will
look into the stereotypical articulations of ‘national pride’ and ‘national
treasures’ as examples of establishing a ‘new global identity’ for a nation
strongly connected with the past on the one hand, and affected by contemporary
migration movement and cultural exchange on the other hand.An encounter of values and discourses, which
takes place in the advertising campaign commissioned by the Polish Tourist
Board (2010-2015), will be contrasted with the results of Rabikowska’s research
on identity-making processes among Polish migrants living in the UK(2009) Rabikowska, M.& K. Burrell, 'The Material Worlds of
Recent Polish Migrants: Transnationalism, Food, Shops and Home', in Kathy
Burrell (ed.) Polish Migration to the UK
in the 'New' European Union: After 2004,Aldershot: Ashgate, pp.211-232;
Rabikowska,M.( 2010) ‘The Ritualisation of Food, Home and National Identity
among Polish Migrants in London’, Social
Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture.Special Issue. Ed. by Marta Rabikowska (2010)
16(3), May: 377–398), and other relevant literature on national symbolism and
representation of Polish migrants in the Western media. The underlying thesis
to this argument is grounded in the concept of re-appropriation of national
identity in a changing historical context and in the arbitrariness of
representation.

Thursday, 12 March 2015

On 28th January 2015, The Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care (CRIPACC) at the University of Hertfordshire launched FoodNet, a network for policy, practice and research stakeholders interested in food and public health in Hertfordshire and the surrounding area. Papers outlining key
research projects being undertaken by the Food and Public Health Research Unit
within CRIPACC were followed by a poster session displaying relevant research from across the University. TVAD contributed a poster showcasing food-related research in the School of Creative Arts.

The poster featured the work of Dr Pat Simpson, Reader in Social History of Art, whose AHRC-funded research project ‘Sex and Socialist Realism’ investigated the relationships between Soviet concern with eugenics in the 1920s and visual constructs of the New Soviet Woman. One aspect of this research focused on propaganda images promoting hygienic maternity and childcare in order to help boost the very low birth-rate and poor survival rate for babies and young children. Central to these images was the message that ‘breast is best’, so working mothers should express milk to be given to babies in factory crêches. Posters also gave clear instructions on what foods and drinks breastfeeding mothers should and should not consume.

Another aspect of the research examined the utopian Soviet idea of a collectivised lifestyle that would allow more women to engage in paid employment. Grigorii Shegal’s poster shows the New Woman opening the door to this new way of life, with its communal canteens, laundries and crêches – an escape from the ‘kitchen slavery’ symbolised by the image of a primus stove.

Mindy Yiran Xie, a student on the BA Hons Contemporary Design
Crafts in the School of Creative Arts depicted her current project is about food and contemporary jewellery. The work is designed to make people aware of the beauty of food and encourage a different
connection with food via the form of jewellery. So far, Mindy has have made a ring with
a 'fork' on top so you can pick food with, and also treats the picked food as
the 'diamond' of the ring.

Professor Joy Jarvis, Professor of Educational Practice, and Dr Rebecca Thomas, Programme Leader of Photography, represented their project 'All’s Well that Eats Well: Sharing Food, Ideas and Ideals in the Creative Arts'. Over the last few months the School of Creative Arts at the University of Hertfordshire has run several initiatives revolving around food and its remarkable ability to create a relaxing environment in which to engage with important issues in learning and teaching. These include a large-scale indoor picnic, themed workshops around ‘breakfast’, ‘lunch’ and ‘tea’ and a student breakfast club, all designed to bring people together in lively and friendly exchanges.

Finally, Dr Grace Lees-Maffei, Reader in Design History, shared her AHRC-funded project 'Designing Domesticity'. It examined the social and material aspects of entertaining at home, from hosting a dinner party to informal teenage gatherings. Using domestic advice books (books about etiquette, homemaking and home decoration), her research showed how the design of the home influences the social organisation of eating at home, as much as those social factors influence domestic design and decoration.

The launch was a success for all involved. Here are some images of the event, including the papers examining research in CRIPACC:

Thursday, 5 March 2015

TVAD Talks take place on the second Wednesday of each month during term time. In 2015, we have heard three speakers from the School of Creative Arts, Professor Emeritus Michael Biggs spoke in January about the evaluation of research, Kevin Dowd gave a presentation ‘Exploring practice-based methods in graphic design research’ and Matthias Hillner's talk was entitled ‘From virtual typography to intellectual property rights (IPR), and from research through practice to research into practice’. Dowd and Hillner are both staff on the Graphic Design and Illustration BA Hons and they presented as a double bill in February. Here, we are able to share two of the three presentations we have enjoyed so far this year.
Watch Prog Biggs' talk on research evaluation here:

Next, we are able to share a talk by Kevin Dowd, ‘Exploring practice-based methods in graphic design research’
The discipline of graphic design is growing to accommodate novel ways of gathering data and generating findings, expanding beyond the established foundation of borrowed rhetoric that has informed current research methodologies. However, there are few examples of methodologies tailored specifically to the skills of the graphic designer as researcher, and fewer still with practice at their core. This talk explores examples of practice-based research in graphic design, highlighting a need to develop methods for design research practitioners. This is examined further through my own study, which proposes a novel system of practice-based methods in graphic design research.
Watch Kevin here:

Our TVAD Talks series continues in March with Dr Ivan Phillips, speaking about his forthcoming book Once Upon A Time Lord: The Myths and Stories of Doctor Who - watch this space!